


Wake Up

by amiraculousladybug



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Character Death, F/M, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 12:04:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6328105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amiraculousladybug/pseuds/amiraculousladybug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, there are things Lucky Charm just can't fix.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wake Up

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuse for hurting my precious babies like this.

This man wasn't an akuma.

That was the first thought which shot through Ladybug's mind as the knife sliced across Chat's throat with a sickening wet sound. The second thought was the numbing, horrifying realization that Chat Noir, her partner, her friend, her kitty was bleeding. Then her mind registered just how much blood there was and her world shattered around her.

“No,” she whispered hoarsely, and then louder, “No, no, no, no, no.” She ran to him, every instant feeling like an agonizing eternity, her body heavy as if she were made out of lead. She dropped to her knees next to him. The attacker had fled, but she would worry about that later. Right now, all that mattered was saving Chat. “Chat, stay with me. Please. We'll—I'll—”

His eyelids were already fluttering shut, his green eyes glazing. He coughed, and his mouth was spattered with blood. “My lady—”

“Shhh, don't talk,” she insisted. She pulled him up onto her lap, cradling him as carefully as she could. Then she slid open her yo-yo to call for an ambulance. More than anything, she wished she could use her Lucky Charm to fix this, but Tikki had said once that Lucky Charm was only good for repairing the damage done by an akuma. With no akuma to cleanse, her Lucky Charm was useless. An operator answered her call then, and she forced herself to speak against the lump that was closing up her throat. “I need an ambulance,” she choked. Chat was nudging her elbow, but she kept talking. If she stopped, she was going to break down. “Chat is—he's—”

“My lady,” Chat said, almost too soft for her to hear. She looked down at him through a blur of tears. God, he was pale, so pale, _too_ pale. There was a horrid bubbling sound as he tried to speak. “Don't. They—they won't come in time.”

“They _will_ ,” she said stubbornly. “I'm not going to lose you, Chat.” She gave the operator their location and hung up. She knew she needed to try to stop the bleeding, but she had nothing to use, nothing to absorb such a large amount of blood. Desperate, she pressed her hands over the wound. He winced at the contact, but she kept up the pressure. “Stay with me, kitten. Stay with me. I can't do this without you.”

Chat gave her the faintest ghost of a smile, pained and sorrowful. He could barely keep his eyes open now. “Can I tell you one thing, my lady?”

She nodded, tears spilling down her cheeks. In this moment, so close to losing him, she would have given him the world if he asked.

His hand reached for her weakly. She clasped it tight, pressing his hand against her cheek.

“I love you,” he murmured. “And I'm—so happy I had the chance to—to be your partner.”

He fell very quiet, then, so quiet that for one terrible instant Ladybug thought she had already lost him. Then she saw the hitch of his chest as his body fought for air, and realized he had fallen unconscious. She clutched at his hand tighter.

“Chat, wake up,” she begged. “Please. _Please_ , kitten.” She could hardly see now through her tears. This couldn't be happening. This had to be a horrible, horrible dream, just a nightmare she was struggling to awake from. Any minute now she would wake up and he would be fine, smiling and flirting with that playful gleam in his eyes, and there would be no blood, no wound, no threat at all. It _had_ to be a dream. She leaned down and pressed a kiss to his lips, putting everything she could into it: her fear, her hurt, her gratitude, her need, and above all the love she'd always refused him.

“Please, Chat,” she whispered, “please wake up. Wake up just this once. I won't complain about you flirting ever again. I'll let you hold me as much as you want. I won't push you away anymore. Just please, please wake up.” She buried her face in his hair, wishing with every ounce of her being that he would wake up and be all right. “Open your eyes, kitten. I can't lose you. I can't. I need you.”

His hand in hers felt dreadfully cold now, and as she sat there and waited for the ambulance that was too late, it grew ever colder. Against her other hand, the one still pressed against his injury, she could feel his pulse weaken until it was hardly there. “Don't leave me,” she pleaded.

Chat's pulse gave a final weak flicker, and then it was gone.

Ladybug's entire body went numb. She couldn't bring herself to move, not even when there was a flash of green light and Chat's transformation wore off for the last time, not even when a little black kwami flew up and began nudging at Chat's face trying to make him open his eyes, not even when the wail of the ambulance siren became audible from blocks away. When she finally managed to pull herself away, she was more devastated than shocked to see Adrien Agreste in her arms, his jacket sticky and dark with blood and his skin pale as death.

“Adrien,” the kwami said, still nudging Adrien's face. “Adrien, wake up.”

Ladybug forced herself to swallow down the lump in her throat. “He's gone. He won't wake up.” Saying it out loud broke down the fragile layer of denial her mind had built, and she dissolved into tears all over again. He was gone. Chat Noir, Adrien, was gone. He wouldn't wake up, wouldn't come to, wouldn't ever open his eyes again. The kwami began wriggling Chat Noir's ring from Adrien's finger, and she swatted him away. “Stop that!”

The kwami looked down as if ashamed, but resumed pulling the ring free. “I have to.”

“Can't you at least _pretend_ to be upset?” she shouted at him. “Your chosen is _dead!_ ”

Adrien's kwami looked at her then, and she saw that his eyes were glossy as if he were about to cry. “This isn't the first time I've lost a chosen,” he informed her. “And just because I'm not blubbering doesn't mean I'm not upset. But no one can know that Adrien had Chat Noir's Miraculous.” He finished pulling the ring off, and was sucked into the Miraculous without another word.

Ladybug looked down at the silver ring on the pavement. How had she never noticed …? Her kitty had been right there, sitting in front of her in class, all this time. What other hints had she missed? There was so much to figure out, but it was too late now. She could never put all the pieces together, could never look for where Adrien and Chat Noir's personalities blended into one. She had lost them both, two of the most precious things to her destroyed in a single moment gone wrong. Without thinking, she reached for the ring. It was so big—a man's ring for sure. What had Adrien thought, that first time he'd put it on and transformed? She'd never have the chance to ask now.

“I'm so sorry, kitten,” she said softly. “I'm so, so sorry.”

Later, she wouldn't remember the precise moment when the ambulance arrived, or how long it took for the paramedics to pull her away from Adrien's body. She wouldn't remember making up a tall tale to explain why she'd called an ambulance for Chat when it was Adrien who was wounded, or describing the attacker to police. All she could remember was numbness, endless numbness, and going home and shutting Ladybug's earrings away in the box she'd first found them in.

_“Chat Noir and I, we're a team.”_

 


End file.
